Sirit to Acquire RSI ID Technologies

This week RFID hardware and solutions provider Sirit announced the acquisition of RSI ID Technologies, a vertically integrated manufacturer of RFID antennas, tags, and inlays. RSI will receive 10 million Sirit common shares initially, whose total value at the time of publication is approximately US$2.4 million.

March 7, 2008—This week RFID hardware and solutions provider Sirit announced the acquisition of RSI ID Technologies, a vertically integrated manufacturer of RFID antennas, tags, and inlays. RSI will receive 10 million Sirit common shares initially, whose total value at the time of publication is approximately US$2.4 million. The deal also includes an earn-out of additional shares over a 21-month period. RSI will continue to operate out of its Chula Vista, California base. The company has a little over 20 employees.

RFID Update spoke with Sirit president and CEO Norbert Dawalibi and CFO Anastasia Chodarcewicz about the deal and their company's reasons for making it. "The acquisition of RSI will enable us to offer our clients more complete solutions, especially for those applications where high performance can be difficult to achieve because of a challenging environment," explained Dawalibi. Vehicle identification, which constitutes the largest source of Sirit's business, is just such an application -- one that calls for custom solutions to overcome unique challenges. RSI's capabilities in specialized antenna, inlay, and tag design will strengthen Sirit's ability to deliver full solutions -- readers and custom tags -- to its customer base.

"We have a long history of making RFID work in difficult environments, and that provides very high value to our customers," commented Dawalibi. "We were looking for a partner that had capabilities to build tags to very different requirements. And RSI is extremely good at building specialized tags." In just the last year, RSI has announced baggage tracking tag antennas and tamper-evident tag products, as well as tag designs based on the new Gen2 chips from NXP.

"This is a very big growth play for us," said Sirit's Chodarcewicz, pointing out how complementary the two companies are. "Even our geographies complement each other," she said. Sirit maintains a small corporate office in Toronto, its official headquarters, but most of its employees as well as its engineering and manufacturing operations are located in Carrollton, Texas, just outside Dallas.

Sirit expects the market for vehicle identification will grow strongly. "We're seeing lots of demand around the world for this application," said Dawalibi. It is not just tolling, which has long been a leading vehicle ID application. It is also electronic vehicle registration and electronic emissions testing verification.

Vehicle identification isn't Sirit's sole focus, Dawalibi noted. "There will be other verticals," he said. "As long as an RFID application has specialized requirements, we'll be there."

RSI, with which Sirit had a close working relationship for a number of years, is the company's third acquisition in two years. In 2006 Sirit acquired UHF reader manufacturer SAMSys and HF reader manufacturer TradeWind Technologies. Dawalibi said the company is always on the lookout for possibilities that fit its growth strategy. "I believe that in the RFID market, there is a lot of room for consolidation. We do continually look at acquisition opportunities."